Greetings From Krakow

Thought I'd drop a line and fill you in on my visit to Poland so far. I’d planned to write sooner, but I don’t do well with jet lag. As I did with my trip to Japan, here are some quick and dirty observations from my first two days here. First off, traveling to Europe feels much different than going to Japan. Japan was strange and new. Krakow is new but not so strange. It’s still Europe and at least this part of Poland has lost most of whatever Eastern Bloc sensibility it may have had. It feels like Western Europe. Familiar, comfortable. And returning to Europe for me is like putting on a favorite old jacket that's been sitting in my closet for years. I keep looking past it, thinking I’d rather wear the new thing I bought a month ago. I prefer novelty. But then, one day, I slide my old friend back on, and it fits like a glove. I remember the worn pockets, the rip in the sleeve, how perfectly it feels around my shoulders. I wonder why it took me so long to wear it again. It feels good, and I start thinking that maybe novelty is overrated.

That's a little of what it feels like being here. Krakow is distinctly European. Like Florence and Venice, its architecture is medieval, and walking around the Old Quarter, particularly Market Square, makes you feel like you should be wearing tights and a court jester’s hat. The buildings are incredibly old and look like they’ve been around forever, with their crumbling cement walls, small windows, and ornate exteriors. So many towers and churches, some of which date back to the 1200s But there’s a modernity here too. Inside these ancient slabs are Diesel and Sephora stores, as if someone crammed old time and new time together in the same place. Surprisingly, it works. Everything here is seamless in that respect.

I also had no idea Poland was so Catholic, even though Pope John Paul II came from here. I’ve seen more nuns walking around than in Italy. Across from our hotel, on an old cobblestone street, is the building where Pope John Paul II lived between 1951 and 1967. Pretty neat. There are pictures of him everywhere. The man was worshipped here, and the Polish take a lot of pride in the fact that he became Pope (as well they should).

Outside the Old Quarter, you begin to feel Krakow's more recent history, the specter of World War II and the horrors that took place not far from here. The buildings go from medieval beautiful to Soviet-era ugly row houses. Some buildings have walls so black, they look out of a Dickens novel. During Stalin’s era, the Soviets gave factories and steel plants as a “gift” to Poland, and the walls on the surrounding buildings in that part of the city are a testament to the pollution that was created.

We have not been to Auschwitz yet; we plan to go tomorrow. But yesterday, we walked through the old Jewish ghetto in the Kazmeriez Quarter, crossed the river, and made our way to 4 Lipowa Street, where Oskar Schindler's factory was located. It was a long walk, probably 3 miles from our hotel. The street was not easy to find. It’s in a dingy, dusty, dirty part of the city, which had its share of down and outers, people with red faces and shifty eyes and drunks who stumbled by us, slurring something incomprehensible in Polish. When we finally found Schindler’s abandoned factory, there were two, large tour buses parked in front, with dozens of school children standing in front of this rectangular, beige building. It looked like a boring office building, old and run down. The paint was peeling, as if it hadn’t been touched since Breshnev was around. The front of the building had a wide opening that was blocked by a green fence, which wore a small sign saying that the factory was closed and was being renovated. Our book said that they're going to turn it into a museum. At the moment, you really can’t see too far inside. There was a small opening behind the fence, and I squeezed in and took a picture of the original steel doors to the factory, which have oxidized over time into this black-green color. They looked bent and misshapen, and they had these strange spikes at the top. The other thing you could see, hanging from two large metal poles above the green fence, was a huge sign that said "Oskar Schindler's Factory". I took some pictures of that too and will post them when I get home.

Seeing this factory, I thought of the movie and tried to imagine what it must have been like 60 years ago for the people who worked there. But I couldn't manage it. Everything around was too “today,” too modern, and I was overcome by this surreal, mental whirl, the same one I got when I visited Hiroshima. Trying to imagine what happened at this place (and around it) and just being incapable because everything around it was too modern.

As we walked back across the bridge towards the comparatively stunning Old Quarter, where we’re staying, I thought how strange it is that such an anonymous place in the middle of an industrial wasteland has now become an attraction for people. How, for all of the atrocities committed by one country against millions of people, all the destruction and inhumanity caused by a nation led by merciless, racist, depraved fanatic, a single German man is remembered for his extraordinary humanity in the face of the worst evil. For what he did in circumstances where the average person would have kept his head down (and usually did) and gone along with the prevailing, brutal, and intimidating authority. It goes to show that for the hundreds of thousands of German men and women who went along passively or acted in concert with the Nazis, there were those isolated few who did not.

Even in hell, a miracle can be found.